Cinema: Lady's Day in Lisbon

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A Man Could Get Killed. Nowadays any movie about spies automatically becomes a spoof, since a hero with a penchant for sex and violence hardly dares to go at it with a straight face. In Killed, James Garner pops his eyes and furrows his brow over the quaint proposition that the colony of international spies quartered in Lisbon has nothing better to do than chase around trying to filch $5,000,000 worth of smuggled industrial diamonds. Cast as a standard case of mistaken identity, Garner eludes more than 20 villains who sport accents to match their allegiances. Helping along from crisis to crisis, with defused dialogue for weaponry, are Tony Franciosa as a would-be smuggler, Sandra Dee as an addled tourist, and Robert Coote as a British embassy chap.

Despite doggedly second-line direction, A Man Could Get Killed is almost salvaged by the gravelly glamour of Melina Mercouri, the resident adventuress who somehow plays every role as though she has just been ordered to quit port on the next steamer. Melina first appears in funeral garb, crying into her former paramour's bier while one black-olive eye winks out a thinly coded message to Garner. When her friends are in trouble, Melina growls: "Try the harbor master; he is in love with my aunt." When a search party orders her to take everything off, she starts by removing her eyelashes, then plucks away most of her coiffure, lets her remaining finery come loose in a monsoon of seductive disorder. In a comedy so frequently becalmed, there is much to be said for a girl who makes her own weather.